


all that we could do with this emotion

by Idestroyedtheworldoops



Series: e·mo·tion [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-04 01:24:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10979454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idestroyedtheworldoops/pseuds/Idestroyedtheworldoops
Summary: “we’re the oldest living-well, un-living things in this whole world, i’d reckon” : over 2,000 years of life (and un-life), from beginning to end





	1. -687 DR

Lydia and Edward used to joke, when they were younger, that the worst moments of either of their lives were the six minutes when she was born already and he wasn’t.

Over the course of their 2,203 years, they collect quite a few moments that beat these minutes _decisively_ in that department, though they do continue to rank.

Neither of them can bear to imagine living in a world where the other doesn’t exist.


	2. -667 DR * -663 DR

“I love him so much,” Lydia whispers, as she holds her youngest brother in her arms.

He is awake, staring up at her with a babyish smile, and as she speaks he makes unintelligible baby noises.

“He’s so good,” Edward whispers in turn, standing beside her. Both of their voices are fogged with emotion- if they start crying, it will not be the first time they’ve been moved to tears by their baby brother.

(Keats, is what they call him- his full name is something longer and more elegant, like theirs, and it feels silly using it for a baby.)

“Can I hold him now?” Edward asks quietly.

“It’s about time to feed him, actually, my dears,” their mother’s voice carries from behind them.

She’s lying in bed, in their room of the inn they’re staying at right now. She’s been resting a lot since giving birth, understandably.

“Oh,” Lydia says, taking the couple of steps to the bed and carefully giving her the baby. Edward stays at her side, moving with her.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” he asks. She seems very tired, which is once again, understandable, but it’s hard not to worry.

Their mother laughs softly.

“I raised two children at once, not too long ago. I should have no trouble with one,” she says.

Lydia and Edward exchange a glance, then plop down on either side of her.

“You have us to help you now, too,” Lydia says, and their mother laughs again.

“You are still children yourselves,” she says.

They fake pout.

“We’re _twenty_ ,” Edward says.

Their mother nods.

“Babies,” she says, a teasing lilt to her voice.

Lydia and Edward keep up the fake moping for a moment, before they all laugh.

Their mother turns her attention back to the baby, still smiling. “You will have to have lived at least a century before any other _elf_ will take you seriously, my dears.”

Lydia and Edward half-sigh, pretending to be in disagreement.

After a moment or two, Lydia reaches out to almost brush the still very tiny ears on Keats’s head.

“This one has a long way to go, then.”

*

Keats is four, when their mother falls ill.

She always claimed to be fine, but she never fully got her strength back after giving birth. There were long periods of time where they couldn’t notice anything wrong, but eventually she’s become completely bedridden, worsening by the day.

They’ve convinced an apothecarist to see her, but he is no real help.

“There is nothing to be done,” he says, standing over her bed. “The disease is not a contagion, it is in her blood.”

He shakes his head. “There is nothing I can do, I’m sorry.”

Lydia and Edward do not respond to him. They are sitting at their mother’s bedside, with Keats asleep in Edward’s lap.

Neither of them ever knew their father- the fact that they’re twins is the only way they know they even have the same one. They don’t know Keats’s, either- their mother did not volunteer that information when she gave them the news she was pregnant again, and they did not pry for it.

Outside of each other, she is all they’ve ever had. Their mother raised them on her own, without a home to be spoken of- when times were bad, they would inhabit outlands and abandoned places, and when times were good, they would inhabit decent inns and the like.

They’ve never had a home, but they’ve always had each other, and that’s what’s mattered. They don’t know how to operate without her. They don’t know what they’re going to do.

The apothecarist, after realizing they’re not going to say anything, bows his head and steps quietly out of the room.

They don’t say anything once they’re alone, either. They feel congested with anguish, but they can’t externalize it.

All they can do is stare ahead at her, lying still, until they hear a sharp outtake of breath. A laugh, maybe. Their mother shifts- slowly, weakly, but her eyes open, and she is looking back at them, now.

“Mom?” Lydia asks, a breathy whisper.

Their mother reaches out both hands, and Lydia and Edward each take hold of one.

She is not saying anything, in response, and tears are beginning to form in their eyes.

“What do we do?“

Their mother smiles, half-awake, and weakly squeezes both of their hands.

“Take care of each other,” she says, her voice so very hoarse, and that is what it takes for the floodgates to break. They both begin crying in earnest, while trying their very hardest not to wake Keats up.

Their mother does not speak again, after that. They all sit there together for a long time, crying or sleeping.

Eventually, their mother’s hands go limp.

*

For all they’d been helping their mother raise Keats, they are not prepared to do it on their own.

The simultaneous plummet of emotions and hands and resources and experience puts them out on the streets again, which is absolutely not a good place to be with a small child. At least one of them has their eyes on him every moment of every day- they could never forgive themselves if they lost him. Still, they need to _support_ him. They’re scraping by, but he needs more than the minimum. He needs a roof, and walls, and heat-

They need a leg up. They need an advantage. They need something that will let them thrive in this position.

“I do have one idea,” Lydia says.

It is the middle of the night, and they are sitting in an alcove on the outskirts of a city, Keats curled up asleep in her lap.

She motions towards her bag, and Edward picks it up, looking inside.

“It should be near the bottom,” she says, “You can’t miss it, it’s the only thing in there that I haven’t shown you yet.”

Edward roots around for a moment, before pulling out a very tattered, very soiled looking book.

“I found it the last time I was out,” she says. “I’m not sure if it’s real, but if it is…”

She trails off, as Edward flips through a few pages. A lot of them are ripped out, and a lot of the words are rubbed to fading or covered by unidentifiable stains, but a decent amount of text is in tact, and as he begins to read it, his eyes widen.

“Do you think it could be the real thing?” Lydia asks, as he continues flipping through the pages.

He flips back to a page near the front of the book, and pauses.

“I think there’s one way to find out,” he says.

He holds the book open so she can see it, then points to one of the relatively shorter passages, really just one line near the center of the page. They both go over it a few times, and then, together, they recite it.

Two different images flash simultaneously- a white chess piece, with different attributes of different pieces making it difficult to discern, and a playing card, in the shape of a sort of lopsided rectangle, with both hearts and spades on it.

They disappear barely a second later, but Lydia and Edward are both left awestruck.

Magic hasn’t been a thing even attempted by anyone but the highly regarded in Faerun until very recently, and it is still not something you’d ever expect to find among the common people.

They both look away from the places their images disappeared, back to the book. _Minor illusion_ , the spell is called.

They don’t say it, but it doesn’t take much to assume neither of their illusions came out the way they had intended.

Still. They _came out_. And they can practice- they can get better.

They look back up at each other, and for the first time in what feels like a while, they both grin.

*

It takes a couple of months to develop the kind of accuracy they want, when it comes to spellcasting.

The book they have seems more like a beginners guide than anything- it doesn’t really detail any spells beyond what you should supposedly know at ‘level 5’, and many of the pages in the middle are torn out or illegible, but it still seems like more than enough. Finding decent magical channels was a more difficult part- attempting any spell above level 0 using just your hands can have repercussions neither of them exactly want to risk. They end up managing to lift a wand from a rich-looking man in a large city, but clear out of the area quickly when he raises an alarm.

They don’t really _need_ two of them. They can share just fine.

They have their eyes on one specific spell near the end of the book- the minor illusions and enchantments they can manage now are good, but for the endgame they have in mind, they’re going to want illusions more complicated than still images or one-off sounds.

*

A crowd of gamblers watch as a small wooden ball rolls around the edge of a small roulette wheel, and curse almost in unison as it finally stops on a number.

One person who made an outside bet on the color white is the only one who doesn’t seem displeased, happily collecting twice the ten gold pieces they bet, but everyone else in the game has lost their money this round.

Just as they have the last three rounds. One or two people have offhandedly voiced suspicions of foul play, but none have carried much weight. Everyone can see the ball rolling, landing on different numbers with no apparent pattern, and everyone can see Lydia standing behind the wheel, not tampering with it at all.

Of course, she’s definitely tampering with it- the ball is not even real. It’s created with the spell _major image_ , but as long as no one besides herself goes to try and pick it up, no one will be the wiser.

A few people gravitate away from the wheel, giving up, but just as many throw down new bets, determined to succeed.

(It probably helps that most of these people are at least a little drunk.)

Lydia is here alone- she and Edward hate to split up, but one of them has to stay with Keats at all times, and they are absolutely not letting him into a place like this.

She should probably get back to her brothers soon. They intend to be out of this town by morning, but she’s reluctant to leave while she still has willing players. Her purse is already heavier than it has been in months.

This is working even better than they thought it would. Nobody suspects you of being a magic user in such a small, out of the way place- she could continue this all night without raising a suspicion. If they can manage this on the regular, she can see them never having to be stuck out on the streets again.


	3. -581 DR * -526 DR

Edward walks through the light rain, up to a bulletin in the center of an empty town square.

He examines the postings- a few job offers, a few advertisements, and-

A wanted poster. A pretty nice drawing of two elves in profile.

_Beautiful strangers, bringing unwinnable games and impossible promises. Report on sight._

He smirks, and plucks the poster off the bulletin. He appreciates the comment on their appearances, though he’s a trifle off put by the rest of the text. Their games aren’t _unwinnable_ , they’re just too much for most people. And _nothing_ is impossible.

They have for the most part moved away from the games rigged with illusion over the last eighty or so years- they were some of the first to try that, true, but certainly not the last. Most establishments where gambling might take place are sweeped with charges of _detect magic_ , nowadays, as magic has grown more common, to prevent cheating from either side.

By the time they were finished with it, though, it had already served them very well. They were well off enough that their brother could grow up in comfort, and at the same time they could continue to advance their magic. They could afford new wands, new books- and even personal artifacts, things that are just for fun.

Their brother’s taken a liking to music, as he’s gotten older, and they support this interest at every interval they can- as for themselves, they mostly delight in accessories, fabrics and jewelry and the like. Lydia and Edward have known how to sew since they were small- they make every outfit they own nowadays themselves, and it’s great to have richer materials to work with. They’ve both come to really enjoy fashion, and they both have a very good eye for it.

They’ve sold a few of their pieces here and there- they’ll get decent money for them, usually, but they don’t exactly have the resources to make a consistent living off of that.

They’ve had to get a little more _creative_ with what they do. They’ll come up with their own games, no magic involved- simple-looking on the surface, labyrinths of strategy and chance that only Lydia and Edward can ever work their way out of, but there’s always someone willing to try, and foolhardy enough to put money on it.

A _lot_ of money, in a lot of cases. And sometimes, _sure_ , they wager things in return that they couldn’t realistically deliver on, but that’s never mattered. They never lose.

Edward tucks the poster into his coat. He’ll have to tell Lydia it’s time to move on again. People will start to get a little _aggressive_ with them, once they think they’ve been cheated, but give them a year or two, and they’ll forget. They’ve been all over Faerun in their time, and every time they circle back somewhere, they’ve long been replaced by the next pair of charlatans, in the minds of the public.

This square seemed empty when Edward got out here, so he tenses when he hears the _crunch_ of gravel just behind him.

He doesn’t have time to draw his wand before he hears the tell-tale sound of an attack spell, but he doesn’t feel anything. By the time he turns around, he barely has the time to step out of the way of a human sized figure falling forward onto the ground where he stood a moment before.

Lydia is standing behind the fallen man, wand out, and she smiles as she meets his eyes. “Some people are just sore losers, huh?”

Edward laughs, stepping around the man towards her. He recognizes him vaguely from a night or so ago.

His ease turns to panic for a split second, when he sees that she is alone.

“Are you alright?” comes a much too concerned voice, as he feels but does not see a hand on his shoulder, and he relaxes again.

They always have Keats disguised or invisible when they’re out in public- he knows this, of course, but it still scares him every time.

They could just as easily disguise themselves- that certainly might prevent close calls like the one they just had, or their faces from ending up on wanted posters.

Call them vain, but they just… really, really like the way that they look. It would take half the fun out of things if they never showed their faces, if they weren’t called ‘beautiful’ even by the people trying to incriminate them. Lydia and Edward don’t _need_ to hide- they can take care of themselves, and where they can’t, they can take care of each other.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Edward says, his tone teasing his brother for his worry.

He lifts the invisible hand off of his shoulder, and he does not let go of it.

“Are you wearing a coat? It’s very damp out here,” Edward says, and he hears a sigh from the space in front of him.

He turns towards Lydia, who gives him a look that says _do you_ think _I would let him outside in the rain without a coat_ , then nods toward the line of buildings at the edge of the square, where they’re staying.

“Why don’t you two head back inside,” she says, “I’ll meet you in a minute.”

*

“How much did he have on him?” Edward asks.

Lydia slips quietly into the front section of their room, and drops a small bag of coins onto a table.

“About 25gp, mostly in silver,” she says, sitting down in a big chair. They don’t make a habit of just _stealing_ out right, but if somebody tries to attack one of them, anything’s fair play.

Edward nods, then pulls out the wanted poster to show her. She studies the portraits for a moment- it’s one of the better depictions they’ve seen, actually.

“I suppose we should be out of here by morning,” she says, and he nods again.

“I could _help_ you guys, you know.”

They both jump a little as the disembodied voice comes from the rooms’s sofa.

Lydia laughs, and casts _dispel magic_ in that direction, revealing her youngest brother sitting down with a harp in his lap, though he isn’t playing it right now.

She and Edward look at each other, then stand up.

They plop down on the sofa on either side of Keats.

“You’re a _baby_ ,” she says, and he groans.

“I’m _eighty-five_ ,” he says, “Some of the races are already done with their lives after eighty-five years!”

“Not us,” Edward says.

Keats sighs. “I know, elves enter society at a hundred.”

“You can come out with us in… fifteen years,” Lydia says, pausing for a moment to do the math in her head. “It’s too dangerous for you right now.”

Keats frowns. “You guys are barely even one hundred and six, though! And you were way younger than that when you became _semi-notorious criminals_ ,” he says, gesturing to the wanted poster, and Lydia and Edward both frown, too.

“We didn’t have anyone else to take care of us then, Keats,” Edward says.

“You have us,” Lydia says.

“I know,” he says, and sighs again. “But you guys don’t have to do everything for me.”

Lydia and Edward both sigh. They’ve had conversations like this before.

“We don’t _have_ to, we _want_ to, Keats,” Edward says.

“You don’t have to worry about things like this,” Lydia waves the poster for a moment, then sets it down on the table. “You just have to let us take care of you.”

“But I _do_ worry,” he says, more insistent, “You take so many more precautions for me than you do for yourselves. You never let me go out without a disguise on, when you’re the ones who are in danger! You have a bounty on your head in like four cities, and one of you goes out alone almost every night!”

Keats shakes his head. “Wouldn’t it be better if we all stuck together, at least? If you let me come out with you, we could all be in the same place instead of one of you staying back to babysit me all the time.”

Lydia and Edward look at each other again.

“Listen,” Lydia says, “I know we might seem a _little_ bit overprotective.”

Keats tilts his head. “You let me win at _every single_ game we played until I made you stop.”

They both smile.

“It’s our job to protect you,” Lydia continues, “Before anything else, what’s most important to us is keeping you safe.”

“Will you think about this, at least?” he asks.

They kiss both his cheeks at the same time, and he groans again, this time halfheartedly.

“We’ll think about it,” Edward says.

*

Lydia and Edward have never had the most _fantastic_ sense of perception.

They’re walking an out of the way road in the dead of night, and by the time they see the shadow, Lydia has already stumbled, clutching her side.

She steadies herself on Edward’s shoulder, then they both spin around, Lydia hissing a bit as she moves her abdomen. The shape doesn’t have a chance to get far before it’s fried by two simultaneous blasts of energy, and crumples to the ground.

The mild exertion of using a spell makes Lydia wince. Edward pulls her hand up from her side to look-a short but deep-looking gash, right on the side of her stomach. A rapidly growing crimson red stain soaking into her dress.

Neither of them say anything. It’s a really bad wound and they’re in the middle of no where and they don’t know anything that’s going to help. They’re both frozen in the moment, panic welling up in them, but before it has the chance to burst out, they hear something.

Soft music, playing just beside them. They’re minds are in too much of a shot state to think much of this out-of-place sound, but it’s a distraction, for a moment.

As it continues, though, Lydia feels her pain start to lessen, and Edward’s eyes widen as the wound under his fingers begins to close. After about six seconds, there is nothing left but a short tear and a large bloodstain in her dress.

Before they have time to react to this, they are squished together, unseen arms wrapping tightly around both of them.

Lydia and Edward remain frozen for a moment, still reeling. They can see each other through the invisible figure- a figure they don’t need sight to recognize, the only other person they know is here, on top of anything else- and as they hold each other’s gazes, they finally start to relax, and their eyes start to glisten.

They hug their brother back, and after a moment all three of them have tears in their eyes.

“How did you…?” Lydia whispers.

The arms around them release. They hear another strum of a harp, and their brother becomes visible.

He wipes his eyes. “I wanted to surprise you,” he says, holding up his instrument a little bit. “I’ve been practicing it in secret- I’ve already gotten a few levels down, I wanted to be really good at by the time I showed you. It’s a different kind of magic than what you guys do, and it does a lot of different things- I thought maybe that would be better, instead of having three of us who could only do certain things, and I thought you might be impressed-”

He stops talking as they pull him into another hug.

“We are _constantly_ impressed with you,” Edward says.

“We’re so, _so_ proud of you, do you know that?” Lydia says.

Keats nods into their shoulders. “I love you guys.”

Edward kisses him on his forehead. “We love you, too.”

After a long moment, they step back from each other.

Keats glances at the body on the ground.

“Should I…?” he asks, motioning to his harp, and grim looks form on both of their faces.

“We should move on,” Lydia says.

Before they do, Keats strums his harp one more time, and suddenly, the three of them are _all_ invisible.

“You _need_ to be more careful,” he says, and they each feel a hand take one of theirs.

In the aftermath of that emotionally charged minute, it’s hard to argue.

*

They let him come along with them to places, after that- always in disguise, of course, but they don’t make him stay home any longer, and they’ll (still, somewhat reluctantly) disguise themselves, as well.

They realize they’ve been a little foolhardy themselves. Keats was right- it is for the best that they always stay together. They all lay relatively low for a decade or a few, only playing people when they really need to, and they continue to develop their powers with some of their spare time. Lydia and Edward are up to the sixteenth level in wizardry, and Keats is making great progress with his bardic magic.

He’s making great progress with his music in general, in fact. When they visit towns where nobody knows their faces, he’ll play for people, and they always very much enjoy it. They’ll give him money for it sometimes, even.

It’s Keats’s idea to start molding a more honest living for themselves, maybe.

People really do like his music, and Lydia and Edward find they thoroughly enjoy being on stage, too. They don’t play instruments themselves, but even when they’re just hosting his show, they have a whole lot of fun with it.

They start to move away from gambling completely, after a while. They still have to be careful about where they go, to perform- there’s no way any of them are going to hide their faces when they’re showing off their talents.


	4. -475 DR

They have a good fifty years, like this. Not hiding, not exploiting- living, together, happily. They are so, _so_ happy, all of them.

For a time.

“It is in his blood,” the apothecarist says, with sympathy. “An inherited disease, that has chosen now to manifest itself.”

Lydia and Edward are sitting together, shoulder to shoulder, at their brother’s bedside. He is sleeping, but even when awake he is weak, and feverish-

They’ve seen this before. They’ve _been here_ before.

“The sickness is not a natural one,” the apothecarist says.

Lydia and Edward feel… nothing. They feel like nothing, they feel empty, and useless, and-

“Magical healing won’t fix this,” the apothecarist continues, “There is nothing to be done. I’m s-”

He is cut off as Lydia and Edward stand, together, knocking their chair back as they do so, and draw on him.

“I don’t believe that,” Edward says, his voice raw.

Their wands prod into the skin on this man’s neck. He seems appropriately terrified.

“There has to be _something_ ,” Lydia says, her voice shaking, “Tell us _something_ we can try.”

It takes a moment for the apothecarist to respond.

“There is nothing… savory, to be done,” he says, finally, and reaches behind him for a scrap of paper and a pen.

Without taking his eyes off them, he scrawls something onto the paper and slides it forward.

Lydia takes the paper, lowering her wand, while Edward keeps his drawn.

It is an address- directions to a location not too far from where they are now.

Lydia and Edward look at each other, then back to the apothecarist.

“If we go here, we can save him?” Lydia asks, raising her wand again.

“If anything still can,” the apothecarist says.

Lydia and Edward look at each other again, then put down their wands.

They hear a groan from the bed, and spin around, kneeling at Keats’ bedside. He is still not awake, just shifting in his sleep, and they both feel their hearts ache.

“We’re gonna make it okay,” Lydia whispers, placing a hand on his feverishly warm cheek.

Edward does the same, with his other.

“It’s going to be okay.”

*

At the address they’ve been given, they find what they don’t want to call a _cave_ \- a dark opening in a wall of rock, the base of a mountain, completely unilluminated from within.

They look at each other. Both of their wands are drawn, but they still take each other’s spare hands as they enter through the crack in the rocks.

As soon as they pass the threshold, they can no longer see the light from outside- the entrance seems to have disappeared. They are enveloped in total darkness, but they can still fell each other’s hands- nothing catastrophic has happened, yet.

They cast _light_ , and both jump as it reveals a hooded figure standing not _one foot_ in front of their faces.

They raise their wands toward it in sync, and as they do they notice other figures- at least a dozen, lining the walls. Lydia glances behind them- the entrance is still disappeared, and where it should be she sees even more hooded figures. They are standing in a perfect circle around Lydia, Edward, and this last figure.

The central hooded figure is the first to act. It raises both of it’s arms towards them, and Lydia and Edward raise their wands higher, but the figure is unfazed.

It places one hand on each of their faces, on their cheeks, and they stop themselves from recoiling.

“You are distraught, children,” it seems to say. A woman’s voice emanates from the inscrutable dark of it’s hood.

Lydia and Edward look at each other once more, then take a couple of deep breathes. The air in here feels stale.

The fingers on their cheeks are long and thin, tinged a light bronze. Hands that a person would have, not a monster.

“Our brother is dying,” Edward says, so quietly the words are almost lost in this cavernous chamber.

“Can you help him?” Lydia asks, and the figure seems to shift.

“You can,” it says, and finally takes it’s hands off of their faces.

It pulls down it’s hood. Standing before them is a sun elf woman, with skin that is lighter than average, a sign of maybe a lack of nourishment, or a lack of exposure to light. Her expression is not one of sympathy- it is not one of anything, really. The woman is straight-faced, though they do think they see something in her eyes. Interest, maybe, or contemplation.

“What do you mean?” Lydia asks, “How?”

The woman looks at her for a moment.

She tilts her head, before she speaks. “The nature of death, child, hurts us all. It cuts our lives short, or it takes from us those we cannot continue without. We have dedicated ourselves to the unmaking of this tragedy- to the pursuit of a world where we can all live, together, forever.”

It takes them a moment to decipher this.

“You’re necromancers,” Edward says.

“We are,” the woman replies. “We study and practice the magics of the soul and the life force, dutifully searching for a way to reach our ultimate goal, but it can be dangerous. We are always in need of new hands.

“We empathize with the pain that death brings, but I’m afraid we don’t have the resources to give out our help for free, as we are. We can teach you our art, we can give you the power you need to save him, but you will have to agree to st-”

“Alright,” they say, at the same time, cutting her off.

The woman expresses emotion for the first time since they’ve seen her, blinking in surprise.

“You will have to agree to stay with us, even after the deed is done,” she finishes, “You will have to become one of us.”

“You can save him?” Lydia asks, “You can show us how?”

The woman nods.

“Then, _alright_ ,” Edward repeats.

*

Keats is dead.

He’s dead by the time they return, and they break down- they collapse to their knees at the apothecarist’s office, sobbing, for hours, before they remember exactly who they just spoke to. There must still be a way to save him- this is still not the end.

They take his body to the cavern, to those hooded figures, and that woman reassures them, this is completely okay. They would have had to let him die before they could get to work anyways, this is better, almost, less waiting involved.

She leads them deeper into the caverns, leads them into a room containing a long, low pedestal, made of clean, white stone.

“The body won’t decay in here,” she says. “That will give you time to learn.”

The woman introduces herself as the leader of this necromantic circle, tells them it’s a good thing they’re already up to the sixteenth level, all they need to learn are the bigger spells, they already have the basics covered.

They ask why she can’t do it, if this is her craft- she should already know how, she could get him back sooner. She tells them souls get a knowledge of the person who’s trying to revive them, and asks if they think he’d chose to come back for a strange necromantic wizard.

They get to work immediately. They don’t rest, or eat, they devote one hundred percent of their time to learning this spell- the first one the circle tells them to try is just called _’raise dead’_. It’s a fifth level spell, well within their capabilities, but their first try fails.

“It’s alright,” the circle leader tells them, in her usual even voice, “Not everyone takes to the art so quickly.”

They try again, and again, multiple times every day for ten days, only resting the minimum they need to renew their spell slots. His body stays the same, in the cold room deep in the catacombs- perfectly preserved, cold, and still.

The other circle members will show up when they are casting, standing in a perfect ring around them and the pedestal, with the leader right at their backs. They assume they are watching them- they can never see anyone’s faces with their hoods up, and the leader is the only one who ever drops hers.

On the eleventh day, when they arrive, the circle leader places her hands on each of their shoulders, and they tense.

She pauses for a moment, her hood down, before speaking. Her eyes are yellow- not gold. They are just a shade more vibrant than dead grass.

“If this spell has not worked by now, it is not going to,” she says, and their blood runs cold.

Before they can react, draw on her, call her a liar, she continues, “It’s time we move on to a more sophisticated one.”

Lydia and Edward glance at each other, and relax again. Relax as much as they’ve been able too, since Keats first fell ill.


	5. -474 DR * -375 DR

The next spell they try is _resurrection_. It is a taxing spell- it can only be cast once per long rest, so they trade off at it.

They fail. And fail, and fail, and fail. They’re both losing themselves- they can feel it. The only time they leave Keats’s side is when the circle leader will pull them away for training, versing them in other necromantic spells, telling them it might help them succeed.

They never leave the circle’s caverns anymore. They wear the robes that make you faceless now, too, though they can always recognize each other, even with them on. They try casting the spell in sync- no change.

The circle leader tries to make them give up, at certain points- ten years, twenty, fifty. They refuse. It’s after one hundred years- precisely one hundred- they break down again.

They both collapse, their faces falling into their arms atop their brother’s cold, unmoving chest.

They’re both crying violently. Their entire bodies shake with it.

“We’re sorry,” Lydia whispers, “We’re so sorry.”

The rest of the circle watches, unmoving, from all around them. They let them stay like this for what feels like many hours, maybe a couple of days- it is hard to keep track of time like that, anymore- before the circle leader places her hands on their shoulders again.

They shake her off, and turn towards her in sync, drawing their wands on her, and every figure in the room moves just as synchronized, pointing their own wands and staffs at Lydia and Edward.

All of them, except the leader herself. She does not react to their aggression, only continues staring at them with her dead-grass eyes.

“You lied,” Edward says, emotion making his words barely audible.

The leader exhales slowly. “Some spirits just refuse to be-”

They cut her off, shooting at her- sloppily. They’re too emotional. They miss, and every person in the room seems to begin charging a spell at the same time, before the leader raises her hand, and they stop.

“You can’t save your brother,” the leader says, and they’re still shaking, they want to fight her, they have nothing to live for, nothing else to lose-

“But you never have to lose each other like you lost him.”

Lydia and Edward freeze.

“Death will try to claim all of us, one of these days,” the leader continues, “Inevitably, one of you will go before the other.”

The aggression, the _anger_ begins to drain out of them, replaced with cold horror.

They hadn’t considered that reality.

How had they not considered that?

They reach for each other at the same time, with their free arms, not taking their eyes or their wands off of their circle’s leader. They each wrap an arm around the other’s side- they’re shaking again.

“No,” Lydia whispers.

In all their lives, no matter what other hardships they’ve faced, they’ve always been there for each other. If they were torn apart…

If they were separated, for good, they know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would _destroy_ them. It’s not a possibility they could even consider- they can’t be alone, in this world. They couldn’t bear it.

“Your devotion- to your brother, and to yourselves- it inspires me, in a way I haven’t been in a long time,” their leader continues. “There is a way that you can have eternity together- you will never have to lose-”

“ _Alright_ ,” they say together, and jarringly, for the first time since they’ve known her, their circle’s leader cracks a small smile.

*

They have to see their brother buried, before they go ahead with whatever the circle leader has in mind for them.

It is the first time they’ve been outside, or worn clothes other than their robes, in nearly a century. Seeing each other in the light again, they look nearly as washed out as their leader.

They kneel on a fresh mound of dirt, before a stone bearing his name, with their hands locked together. They have not let any of their circle’s member’s follow- they are alone, the three of them, for the last time.

When they cry, they cry quietly. Mostly they sit, grieving, mourning, _accepting_ , finally, after so long.

“He would want us to keep going,” Edward says, after a long time.

Lydia nods, slowly. “He would want us to be happy.”

They both choke up again, at that.

Edward places a hand on the still fresh earth.

“We’re sorry we couldn’t save you,” he says, tears falling onto the grave.

“We’ll save each other,” Lydia promises, placing her hand down beside his. She is crying again, so much that her final words to her brother can hardly be understood, but she has to believe he hears her.

_“We love you.”_

*

They are lead into a cavern even deeper than the one where their brother’s body was kept.

It contains a myriad of ritual components, a large board with different colors of string connecting different pinned up images, a desk, a bookshelf, and a bed. They realize with a mild start that this is probably their leader’s personal room.

“There are many different ways of extending your life,” she begins, “But only one known way of making yourself truly immortal.”

She begins tracing her fingers along one of the long pieces of twine on her board, a yellow-green one.

“ _Magic_ is forever, and if you can bind your living soul to your magical essence, you can live forever, as well. The issue is, in order to do that, you need an energy more powerful than magic to do the binding.”

Her touch lands on a small but detailed sketch at the end of this piece of string, a man on the ground with beams of the same colored energy coming out of him, enveloping a group that seems to be moving away from him.

“In the city of Greenhold, about three centuries ago, a man in his dying moments cast a spell that destroyed the entire army that was attacking his beloved home.” she moves to a blue string, this one connecting a picture of two women embracing amidst lush greenery, growing up from waves of blue energy. “A long-separated pair of lovers who met again in Rockport were said to feel such joy at being reunited, they ended a drought that had lasted fifteen years.”

Lydia and Edward look at each other, not interrupting her, this time, though they do not understand.

Their leader seems to notice this, after a moment, and turns back toward them.

“What backed this man’s spell, what revivified this town- it was the most powerful energy that there is. The greatest power that exists. It is inside all of us, always, not supporting our life, but supporting our very beings. Our identities. We are not who we are without it- we are shells, empty and nothing. What makes us people, what makes us _us_ , is of course- Emotion.”

Lydia and Edward blink, and the circle leader turns back to her board.

“Emotion is not just an abstract concept- it is a tangible energy, contained within all of our souls, and when it is strong enough, it can move to affect the world outside of our bodies, in ways that would, by any other means, be thought impossible.” She gestures to the pictures she has pinned up. “I spent years of my life studying this concept, visiting places where it was said to have manifested, and when I was lucky, witnessing it in action. It is almost only ever able to be used in a moment of death, when the whole soul is already leaving the body, but I believe with my entire being it is possible to use it in the every day. It is possible to create a surplus of this energy, to do incredible, unthinkable things, at any time.”

Her hand trails down a white string, towards a figure that looks a lot like all of them, faceless in a dark hood, though upon further examination, it’s hands are skinless- only white bone. “I have heard of it done- a person using Emotion to succeed in becoming a lich. They take the energy that is already inside of them, and bind it on one specific variety- Joy, or Hope, or Love. You two-” she looks back at Lydia and Edward- “You have a love that has been your reason for existing your whole lives. If anyone here can channel their Emotion into energy to seal immortality for themselves, I think it is you.”

She turns back to face them completely. “Now that you have all of the information,” she says, “Will you undergo the rituals? Will you try?”

Her words are oddly pleading. Lydia and Edward look back at each other for a moment. The various words she’s used since she first brought this concept up bounce around their minds-

_Immortal_

_Eternity_

_Forever_

“Yes,” Lydia says.

“Of course,” Edward finishes.

*

It takes a while to prepare themselves. In the time it does, they test their new abilities in ways they hadn’t had time to before. For all the dreariness of it’s reputation, necromancy can be a lot of fun, if you let it be.

They do their best to enjoy their lives, even with the gaping hole in them. They focus on each other, and they focus on their craft, and they focus on making the most of it.

Eventually they gather in the main chamber, the entire circle. Lydia and Edward feel unseen eyes boring into them even more than usual.

Their leader has prepared a draught for them, the contents of which they don’t know the entirety of. She stands in front of them with her hood lowered, and folds her hands in front of herself as she hands them two viles.

“You know the rituals, children,” she says, “You have to _concentrate_ , on your magic, and on your emotions. Your one Emotion, that will bind you to life. If you don’t summon those energies effectively enough, this will fail.”

They take each other’s free hands, clasping them together tightly.

They are scared. Perhaps not as much as they should be.

A long moment passes as Lydia and Edward concentrate, on the power that they’ve been cultivating for nearly three hundred years, and the power that’s kept them going for even longer. They weave them into an incantation, one final spell they will cast from their living bodies.

When they’ve cast the entire spell, they open their eyes, and look at each other- they have a very short window to drink before the spell miscasts, they know, but they can’t help taking one last moment.

“Forever?” Lydia whispers, raising her vile, and even through the shadow of their hoods, they both see each other smile.

“Forever,” Edward agrees.

They down their draughts, throwing them back at the exact same time, and as soon as they swallow they both feel a numbness start to permeate their bodies, starting in their chests. A mild panic starts to rise in them- they weren’t told about this, but it must be normal, they must have done this correctly, right?

The numbness reaches their hands, and they don’t fall, don’t drop away from each other, thank goodness- they lock up, freezing in place, interlocked.

As the numbness reaches their heads, their visions starts to fade. The last things they ever see with their eyes are each other, freezing up, their paralyzed bodies beginning to lose balance.

*

They wake up.

They wake up, and they feel… they don’t feel, exactly. They don’t get much physical sensation, but the sensation they do get is something cold and hard against their backs, and something cold and hard wrapped around their hands. They _feel_ something else- an energy within them, glowing, pulsing almost like a heartbeat might.

They are looking straight up at a familiar dark cavern ceiling, and they recognize this room- this specific room. They both shoot up, recoiling from the white marble pedestal, and realize two things at about the same time.

The first is that they’ve shot up in the literal sense- they are floating about a foot above the pedestal now, in a sitting-up position. The second is that the cold, hard things wrapped around their hands are _each other’s hands_ \- the only parts of their bodies not concealed by their robes, their hands and wrists, are nothing but bone.

They shudder, at this, then finally look straight at each other. Their faces are obscured by their hoods, as always, but they cannot see an inkling of each other’s faces within the darkness.

This is… disturbing, to say the least. They try concentrating for a moment, trying to get their forms to change at their will, but there is no effect.

“Lydia? Edward?”

They both look down. Their leader has her own hood lowered, and she is looking up at them with more nerves in her expression than they’ve ever seen.

They look at each other again, then move to an upright position in the air. They float down to stand in front of her- it comes easy to them, easier than walking. All they have to do is think about it.

Her eyes widen as they do this. She hesitates, for a moment.

“Do you know yourselves?” she asks, her nerves coming through in her voice, as well.

They look at each other again. They cannot see their own expressions, but they can read confusion from each other, even like this.

“Yes?” comes Edward’s voice, from the void of his hood.

The circle leader exhales sharply, a sound of disbelief.

“How do we change they way that we look?” Lydia asks, her voice emanating from her hood as well.

Their leader stares at them for a moment, and Lydia and Edward both float a solid foot backwards when she _laughs_.

It is not a small or contained laugh- her whole body moves with it. She covers her mouth with her hand, and bends over a bit.

“ _What,_ ” Edward says, his voice breathy with surprise despite his lack of breath.

It takes a moment for her to calm down, and when she does, she shakes her head.

“That’s something only the two of you would ask,” she says, sounding ecstatic.

She turns, and faces the rest of the circle, standing as they always do around them.

“You see?” she says, gesturing widely to Lydia and Edward, “It can be done!”

The figures shift in a way they’ve never seen them before- they seem to turn and whisper to each other, glancing to and from Lydia and Edward.

“What do you mean?” Lydia asks, darkening at what her words seem to imply.

Their leader turns back to them.

“I’ve never had anyone succeed at this before,” she says, an excited whisper, and she goes to cup both of their cheeks, but her hands pass straight through them.

“You could have _told_ us that,” Edward says, a little affronted.

She ignores him, and they both look at each other again.

“I asked you another question,” Lydia says, and their leader glances back at them.

“Oh- you can’t,” she says, and they both float up with a start.

“You could have told us _that_ ,” Edward says again, but their leader just shakes her head, laughing.

“My children,” she says, and they realize they very much dislike it when she calls them that, “You have no idea what you’ve just done.”


	6. -284 DR * -137 DR

Their circle’s leader is emboldened by their success, to say the least.

She tries turning herself into a lich almost immediately afterword, and fails, miserably. They watch her form convulse, shedding volts of black electricity, before she disintegrates, leaving only a pile of ashes.

Another from the circle takes her place. They lead decently for a while, but eventually they try as well, and fail even worse.

This cycle goes on for nearly a century. Until, in the end, it is only the two of them.

More sadness comes with this than they expected. It is nothing drastic- they barely knew most of these people, and if they knew them at all, the relationships weren’t exactly friendly.

But they were people who they affiliated with, people who they shared something with, and now they are gone. It is just the two of them, for the first time in their lives.

This might not be as bad, if they weren’t consigned to an eternity as skeletons in dark hoods. They can’t show themselves in public, or in daylight- they have to stick to the caverns most of the time.

The few times they do move around, they encounter some amateur adventurers looking to vanquish them for experience points. Lydia and Edward vanquish _them_ with relative ease, but it puts them on edge.

They’re monsters, now. The kind of thing that people fear, that people kill for fun. Faceless, undead, half-alive.

It is… a miserable existence.

They try to hold on. They really do. They try to make the most of this, to let Love fuel them, to focus on each other. But in the midst of this, being ostracized from society, being condemned to the shadows, it’s hard to see any point in going on.

He wouldn’t have wanted this, for them. He would have wanted them to _live_ , to do the things that they love, not to hang around in the living world suffering just for the sake of being in the living world. The afterlife- even whatever the afterlife reserves for those who violate it’s order- couldn’t be much worse than this, could it? What are the odds that it would separate them? That’s the only variable keeping them going, at this point- the possibility that it might.

This is when they realize- they’ve condemned themselves to a different afterlife than him. Even if they let go, even if they give up, they will still never be reunited.

They’re slipping. They can each feel it, and it is both a terror and a relief.

They can’t be apart, but they can't bear forever like this.

They are standing at the edge of a small town, that is being ransacked by bandits. They watch the carnage from afar, hear the wails of people being dragged out of bed by the event.

They are close to the end. They both know that. They try to hold on to Love, but it is being slowly replaced in their hearts by Suffering.

They don’t say this, as they stand in the shadows, watching. The people in this town are suffering, too- many of them are losing their homes and loved ones, their lives as they know them, or their lives altogether.

“Edward,” Lydia says, her voice coming distorted and distant.

It takes a little effort to look over at his sister, to focus on her.

“Lydia?” he asks, "Why are we here?"

His memory-  _all_ of his thoughts and feelings- his _identity_ has been fading in and out, for a while, but he recalls she was the one who prompted them in this direction, away from the caverns.

“Help me try something,” she says, and takes his arm, floating slowly towards the town.

He follows her, and as they move she whispers to him her idea. It registers with him just enough that he thinks he can do his part effectively.

They keep moving, until they are close enough to be seen by these people, if any of them were paying attention.

They look at each other, and then in sync, they begin an incantation.

It is the same incantation that made them what they are- until it isn’t. They stop halfway through, and add a brief closure- most importantly, though, they are not casting it on themselves.

After a moment, a short second that feels longer than an eternity, the entire scene heaves.

Townsfolk’s cries of terror or anguish turn to clouds of dark smoke, Emotion externalizing as they externalize their emotions. The bandits scatter, terrified, as black energy pours from their would-be victims, but the townsfolk continue to scream, with no idea what is happening to them.

They stop, after a few minutes, when they realize they are not being harmed by this energy. As the people calm down the flow of the energy slows to a stop, and Lydia and Edward have to concentrate to keep it tangible, keep it from dissipating.

Concentration is not the easiest thing to keep, as they are, and the energy- all of it, _so much_ of it, enough to blot out the entire town's view of the night sky- floats gently upward, gravitating toward itself, a dark, enormous, undulating cloud, as they each struggle to think of the next step.

Best to start simple. They compel the energy in the same way they compel their forms to move, and thank goodness, it responds- it floats down, and sinks into Lydia and Edward’s lich forms, down to their cores, touching their non-existent hearts.

Immediately, they feel changed.

Their minds are clear, their vision is perfect- they even feel more tangible.

Lydia and Edward look at each other- _really_ look at each other, clear-minded and fully comprehending, for the first time in so long.

It takes a few moments to adjust, before they speak- to get used to the feeling of vitality, the feeling of clarity, the feeling of _feeling_.

“You’re brilliant,” Edward says, giddily, his voice clearer than it has been in years.

Lydia still has a hold of his arm, and they begin to float back, away from the town, the great deal that remains of the town’s Suffering floating around them and obscuring them in the night.

“I love you,” she says, equally giddy, thrilled to feel like herself again, thrilled that he does, too.

He locks his still-skeletal fingers around hers as he replies "I love you, too," and if either of them could, they would be beaming.

*

“Why do you think she could never do this?,” Edward asks.

They marvel at the necrotic energy they’ve collected, letting it funnel around them, for a while. Emotion, as a tangible energy. This was their circle leader’s vision, an energy more powerful than any other, with the ability to do- if she wasn’t wrong- almost _anything_. And she isn’t around to see it.

They are.

“Well,” Lydia starts, “She did say she’d never successfully completed the rituals to make someone a lich. Mixing up spells- taking parts out and adding parts in, using them outside of their intended purposes- can have serious consequences, no matter what it is you’re casting.”

There was an overwhelming chance the edit of the rituals they just completed would miscast. They took out most of it and added just enough to make it a proper spell- an area of effect spell, even, instead of one focused on a specific target. When you are a lich, you don’t need any kind of wand or staff- your lich form is a functional magic channel, but if you miscast…

“If she’d never even succeeded at the proper spell, it would have been ridiculously dangerous to try and _change_ it,” Lydia continues. “It was ridiculously dangerous for _us_ to try it, even, if a little less so.”

She doesn’t say what she’s fairly sure her brother already knows- if this spell had miscast, they would have both been destroyed simultaneously.

Instead, they feel grounded- they feel good. For the first time in three centuries, they feel _excited_. Never could they have imagined having an _excess_ of this kind of power, a potential so vast it’s overwhelming.

“Do you think,” Lydia says, doing her best to look her brother in the face when their faces are eternally obscured by dark hoods, “We could use it to change the way that we look?”

Edward locks his skeletal fingers into hers, and if he had a face, he would grin. “That is the greatest idea I have ever heard, absolutely, we could do it.”

Lydia would also be grinning, if she had a face- maybe she will, soon.

*

They stand a couple of feet apart, in an open clearing, in the dead of night. They stand still and concentrate, and the cloud of necrotic energy splits in two, one cloud sinking in to each of them, in a different way than it has before.

The energy does not breach the surfaces of their forms; it _shapes_ the surfaces of their forms. They channel for a _long_ time, creating every intricacy, the closest they can get to a perfect outline.

And then, they let the energy solidify.

Lydia looks down- she can’t help it, the sight of anything but awful black robes in her periphery is something she hasn’t experienced in _so_ long. She brushes the wide skirt of her dress, bright blue and pink and gold, then gets distracted by her _hand_ , long fingers covered in skin that she hasn’t seen in _centuries_ , and then.

She looks up.

Edward looks up from himself at the same time she does- he is dressed in the same colors as her, as they’d planned, but that is all she has time to take in before she throws herself into him, wraps her arms ( _arms_ , covered in skin and silk and lace) around his neck.

Edward laughs, hugging her back, holding her tightly, and she laughs too, burying her face in the crook of his neck. If either of them had hearts, (they didn’t need to create the _inner_ intricacies of the body), they would be leaping.

“We did it!” Lydia says, pulling back to hold him at arms length. Edward looks just like himself- just like she remembers.

A portion of the remaining energy floats into Edward’s hand, and immediately solidifies into a good-sized hand mirror. They are standing close enough that when he holds it up, they can both see themselves grin.

“We are _stunning_ ,” Edward says, and in the euphoria of it all, it takes them a moment to realize what’s just happened. What they’ve just done, without even thinking about it.

Lydia reaches out to touch the edge of the mirror- relatively simple, design-wise, but unflawed.

“How did you do this?” she asks, looking back up at him.

Edward shakes his head. “I just _did_ it. I thought of what I wanted, and it just happened.”

Lydia pauses, one of her hands still on his arm. With the other hand, she curls two fingers towards herself, and the mirror dissipates back into energy.

It floats up to join the rest of the remaining energy. Lydia wills it all into the form of a full length mirror, and they see themselves, standing together.

“Wow,” Edward whispers, smiling even more.

“This changes everything,” Lydia says, excitement spilling into her voice.

This excitement dies down a little when they realize they are out of energy.

They quickly unmake the mirror, and take some of it into themselves, then look at each other.

“This isn’t going to last us forever,” Lydia says, “We shouldn’t just rely on the chance we might happen across some disaster every so often. If we end up going too long without it…”

Edward nods, as she trails off. “We need to garner some sort of steady intake.”

It hangs in the air between them for a moment, exactly what this really means.

_We need to make people suffer._

The thought doesn’t bother them as much as they thought it might. If it’s a choice between a bunch of strangers lives or their own, _of course_ they’ll choose themselves. Of course they’ll choose each other.

Everything _is_ changed, now. They can have their faces back, they can go out in public, they can _live_. They can live, _forever_.

Lydia and Edward couldn’t save Keats, but they will save each other. No matter what it takes.

Anything can be compromised, as long as they are safe and together. Nothing could ever matter more that.

They hear a roar, in the distance- the woods they’ve been biding their time in are notoriously wrought with monsters.

“Well,” Lydia says after a long pause, looking from the lingering energy to her brother, “I have an idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be clear, it's -284 when the last circle member dies, and -137 (about 150 years later) when they discover the power of Emotion/the rest of the chapter takes place


	7. -136 DR

Valuables clatter onto a table- huge rubies, diamonds, chunks of gold- and every person in the pub turns their head.

“I still can’t believe this,” Edward says, making a show of counting out the gems on the table.

“We have to go back in soon,” Lydia says, smiling and shaking her head, “And bring bigger bags, or something! This is ridiculous!”

The inhabitants of the room are still staring at them- or rather, staring at their possessions. After a few looks around the room, a gruff human man stands up, and approaches their table.

“Now just where’d you two go about findin’ all of that?” he asks, and a good few people around him sit up straighter, tuned in for their answer.

Perfect.

“This?” Lydia asks, gesturing to the stones on the table, “Oh, dear, this is barely a fraction of what we found.”

“There’s _mountains_ of stuff like this still out there, more than we could even hope to carry out!” Edward says, placing a hand on his cheek and shaking his head.

“I didn’t hear you mention _where_?” A halfling woman sitting a couple of tables away calls out.

“Of course,” Lydia says, pulling out a map and unfolding it onto the table. “It’s a clearing in the Felicity Wilds, that my brother and I happened upon journeying through them. It’s full of _unimaginable_ riches,” she continues, pointing to the spot on the map that marks the clearing, “More than any one person could find uses for in a lifetime!”

The room erupts with whispers. The younger looking people, like the halfling woman, sound excited, while the older looking people, like the man, sound cautious.

“Th’ Felicity Wilds, huh?” The man says, looking at them a little sideways. “Y'know, nobody’s ever gone in there alone and come back out alive.”

“So don’t go in _alone_ ,” Edward says, “Bring your friends! Bring your _enemies!_ Make it a party!”

“I know _we_ couldn’t have done it without each other,” Lydia says, linking arms with her brother.

“Of course, even then, it wasn’t an _easy_ trip,” Edward says, tilting his head. “If you really don’t think you’d have what it takes, that’s understandable. Some people just aren’t cut out for adventuring, and that’s okay.”

The halfling woman snorts. “ _You_ did it, didn’t you?”

She means this as a derisive statement, but they don’t take offense. It’s true that they don’t exactly have the looks of seasoned adventurers, as they are- more the people seasoned adventurers might be tasked to rescue. Attractive, and fashionable, but not very physically formidable.

“We just thought it’d be nice to share this prize,” Lydia says, “I know there’s no way we could take it _all_.”

The whispers in the room have doubled in volume at this point, and Lydia and Edward begin collecting their things off the table.

“We have more of these, if anybody would like one?” Lydia says, holding up the map, and before she’s finished her sentence a good fifteen people have gotten up to approach.

They have to make sure they don’t touch anybody, physically, as they pass out the maps- that’s happened in a few of the towns they’ve gone to spread the word in, so far, and a person’s arm passing straight through their form is always detrimental to their act.

Yes, they can interface with the living if they concentrate, but even then most everyone can tell something is up- they’re too cold, or too smooth, or too lightweight. Emotion has allowed them to do a lot of things so far, but perfectly imitating life is not yet one of them.

They’re glad no one tries to rob them of the jewels they’re using for props this time, either- having to murder somebody usually doesn’t help their pitch.

The crowd around them disperses into groups, and Lydia and Edward quietly slip out.

“That went well,” Lydia whispers, letting their valuables dissipate back into energy. There is no one outside at this time of night to see them.

They head down the empty streets of this small town, arms still linked.

“Do you think it’s about time we headed back?” Edward asks, as they reach the outskirts.

Lydia considers a moment, then nods. “I think we’ve done enough.”

She turns and smiles at him, and he smiles back. “And we certainly don’t want to miss any of our guests.”

*

They miss a few of their guests.

There are thirty or so people already in the Felicity Wilds by the time they get back, and though it’s shame they’ve missed out on any emotion they might have been expressing while they were gone, their idea kicks into motion almost immediately.

They cast a wide range over the Wilds, encompassing all of the humanoids in the area. A dragonborn woman shouts an expletive as she collapses to her knees, bloodied, and a small cloud of energy comes out of her mouth. A gnome woman complains loudly to her party as she’s backhanded into a tree, and creates a much larger cloud. A tiefling man cries out as his companion is cut down, and the energy this creates floats quickly through miles of woods to join the rest.

Lydia and Edward delight as they let the Suffering float around them. The cloud of energy is already taller and wider than both of them, and growing larger by the moment.

“Amazing,” Lydia whispers, putting a hand to her cheek.

“It’s so much,” Edward says, as the energy continues to slowly collect, “What are we going to do with it all?”

Lydia thinks, for a moment.

“Maybe we should play it safe, for a while,” Lydia says, looking at him, “Just let it collect, and see if we’re really creating energy at a higher rate than we’re consuming it.”

Edward pauses for a moment as well, looking back at her, then nods.

“If we are, though?” he asks.

The smile creeps back onto Lydia’s face.

“Then, we can start getting creative.”

*

It is a few days, before anybody actually reaches the central clearing.

They deliberate for a while what to do once they get there. It’s true that coming so far only to find nothing would probably elicit a significant reaction, but there is word of mouth to think about. If word gets out that the story they’ve created is a lie, people will stop coming, and they can’t let that happen.

There’s the third option of just killing anybody who reaches the end, though it would be a shame to miss out on the emotion they might have expressed repeating their journey back out.

Eventually, they come to a decision.

The dragonborn woman hoots and hollers as she arrives on a clearing lined with riches befitting a dragon’s hoard, and hurriedly begins scooping as much as she can into her bag. The gnome woman and her party reassess their map three or four times after they come upon a clearing that is totally empty, speaking to each other in confused and upset voices. The tiefling man does not react as he arrives, alone, on a clearing containing nothing but grass.

All in all, they let about a third of the people who arrive take what they came for. This way, the people who claimed their prize will be more than likely to brag to their friends, and the people who came up empty handed should be assumed to have just made a mistake- to have read their maps wrong, or to have bailed before they finished their journey. To be lying out of embarrassment, if they claim otherwise.

They let things go on like this for a couple of months, a somewhat steady stream of people coming in, whether they heard news from Lydia and Edward themselves or one of their victors. Even with the energy lost on the valuables they don’t end up un-making, they are in fact collecting energy faster than they are using it up- most of the time, at least.

The thing is, for some people, fighting their way in and out of a forest full of monsters just isn’t that bad. Even some people who come up empty handed shrug it off, happy with the experience they’ve gained. With magical healing as a factor, even death is almost never at stake- sometimes the party’s healer is the one taken down, sure, but the vast majority of people are able to reach the clearing alive.

Whether or not they are creating an excess really depends on the mood and outlook of whoever happens to be around at the time, and that is just no good.

“We need to advance our methods,” Edward says, while they are waiting around in the clearing, alone together.

They are sitting across fairly elegant chairs, under a beautifully crafted white gazebo. All of this will certainly be unmade as soon as they get up, but they like to have fun with the energy while they aren’t seriously using it.

There is even more energy floating around them, slowly swirling, occasionally sinking into their forms. It is spread just thin enough they can still see the world outside.

“I think cutting off their access to healing would help,” Lydia suggests, “Then they could actually be worn down, instead of being able to constantly refresh themselves.”

This is something within their capabilities- they’ve learned to do more than just create things and sustain themselves with the energy of emotion. They can cut off or reverse the effects of spells, or unmake objects that already existed- trees, weapons, people- though this does use up energy that cannot be taken back.

Edward nods. “The only thing is, if I were in some big, dangerous woods, and my access to healing were cut off,-”

“You’d bolt,” Lydia finishes, nodding. “That’s a good point. We definitely need people in here as long as it takes to get to the clearing and back.”

“Longer, would be nice,” Edward says, and Lydia sits up straighter.

“That would be _very_ nice,” she says, “Do you have something in mind?"

Edward hums, and Lydia taps her fingers on her armrest.

"What are you thinking? Send them on a wild goose chase, from here?”

“No,” he says, pausing for a moment, “More, get them behind closed doors.”

Lydia nods slowly. “If they didn’t have the option to run away, we could do whatever we wanted with them.”

She pauses, as they both sort of cringe.

“And that sounds very bad when I say it like that,” she says.

“But we wouldn’t be doing anything weird with them,” Edward says, “Just the same things we’re doing right now, but inside, and forever.”

She’s not sure if he meant to say that, but Lydia still cracks a smile, and interlocks her fingers with her brother’s.

“Forever,” she repeats quietly, and Edward returns her smile.

After a comfortable pause, Lydia glances to the roof of their little gazebo.

“It’s going to take a long time to build up enough for a whole building,” she says.

“We have time,” Edward replies, and they both smile even bigger.

Then they hear voices in the distance, and they both stand up with a start. Their chairs and gazebo dissipate, and they float to the edge of the clearing opposite the voices, their masses of energy helping them blend into the shadows.

They don’t have time to create anything before a party breaks through the treeline, so said party is met with an empty clearing. Surprised and disappointed voices carry over the grass, bringing with them a continuing stream of necrotic energy.

Lydia and Edward watch their clouds grow steadily, even as some of the energy is taken in by their spectral forms, and smiles creep back onto both of their faces.

They have time.

“Forever,” Lydia whispers into the dark, squeezing her brother’s hand.

He squeezes hers back.

“Forever.”


	8. 33 DR * 313 DR

It takes about a century, for them to build up enough energy for what they have in mind.

“You’re doing _so_ well,” Lydia’s voice reverberates from the walls and ceiling of a long, well-lit corridor.

A human woman stops to lean against said wall, clutching her bleeding stomach and taking quick, ragged breaths.

“Fuck you,” she manages, and a puff of darkness emits from her mouth and raises to the ceiling.

Lydia laughs quietly, though she does not let the woman hear this. They’ve found that being positive and encouraging is actually very good for their goals- vehemently denying and invalidating the fact that people are suffering will usually get them to voice that suffering much more often.

They’ve found a lot, in the last one hundred years- that they can use energy to scan through people’s minds, or to pull preexisting objects from anywhere in the world. That people are much more eager to take on a challenge if their prize is something they couldn’t find anywhere else, and not just plain money.

That for every person who fails miserably at something, there is always another person right behind them _convinced_ they’ll be the first to succeed. It is a quality they can really appreciate in people- it works _spectacularly_ in their favor.

They’ve always known this, really, they suppose- back in their days of gambling and games and confidence tricks, they could get huge sums from people by tempting them with challenges no one had managed to best, promising prizes no one had ever seen. They suppose they just expected people to be more cautious with their lives than their wallets.

It seems the opposite, actually.

When Lydia and Edward finally had enough energy to create what they wanted, they collected a few magical items- those that were highly sought after, and completely one of a kind- and left brochures and flyers in their places, advertising “ _Wonderland_.”

(They came up with the name together, and they’re both very proud of it.)

About twenty people are presently contained inside an _enormous_ building, which takes up most of the clearing that they operate out of.

Wonderland consists, currently, of a huge, branching labyrinth, made up of corridors like the one the woman is traversing. The halls are lit up neon bright, varying between pink and blue and yellow and green and violet all between them. The directions people are meant to go are marked with multicolored arrows lighting up across the walls, and the floors are millions of multi-colored tiles.

Every person enters into a different path, and of course the paths themselves are constantly shifting. No two routes are the same, so contestants rarely run into each other.

Lydia and Edward have starting speaking to their contestants, too. It’s a relief, after so long, even if most of the extents of these interactions are just giving instructions. It can be a lot of fun- they never _show_ themselves, though. Not yet. They’ve long been powerful enough undead that a cleric’s channel divinity couldn’t _destroy_ them, and with incorporeality most people could never even touch them, but still. They’re _relatively_ new to this power- best to be safe, for now. They can see, hear, and speak through the walls and creatures that they create, allowing them to design and create their contestants' paths through Wonderland without having to supervise in person.

The various prizes sit piled up with them in the maze’s center. They haven’t given any out yet, and they’re not sure if they will. They haven’t decided exactly what winning will take, in Wonderland- for now, they’re just going to wait and see how much Suffering they can get out of a single person, in a lifetime.

*

People don’t last _very_ long inside Wonderland.

It’ll very, across races, and between skill sets- some people are more equipped for this than others. On average, though, people will last about two weeks, and that’s if they’re expending energy to make sure they don’t need to worry about things like eating or sleeping.

(They have the excess to give, at this point, and it almost always repays itself.)

Of course, there are plenty of people who die within the hour, and there are a few who’ve been in for a good few months. They still haven’t let anybody win- the thing is, letting somebody win would require letting them _go_ , and losing a functional source of Suffering. They’re still thinking about it- as always, they don’t think this is an _impossible_ game.

Just a very very difficult, and very very _long_ one.

*

“Whoa.”

A lone dwarf woman takes a step back as her path is crossed by two spotlights, and filled up with fog. Upbeat music starts to play in the background, as the fog slowly clears, and she sees that instead of some kind of monster, two beautiful elves have appeared in her path.

The dwarf woman’s eyes widen, and Lydia and Edward both smile.

They’re not really sure what they’re doing. They’re just very excited.

They pause, for a moment; they haven’t spoken to anyone else face to face in a very long time.

“Hello,” Lydia says, still smiling, and when the dwarf woman hears her voice she stands up with a start.

“Oh,” she says, glancing briefly to the ceiling, where she’s heard that same voice emanate from before. “It’s you.”

Lydia laughs, and they both nod.

The music starts playing again and the lights come back up, as Lydia gestures briefly towards both of them.

“It’s us! Your hosts here in Wonderland, Lydia and Edward,” she says.

They both pose as the beat hits on their music, and their lights flash for a moment, before going back to normal.

“How has your journey been going so far?” Edward asks.

The woman laughs.

“Not _great_ ,” she says, and a bit of necrotic energy releases from her mouth.

This woman has been in Wonderland for nearly ten hours- not very long, in comparison to the majority of the other players, and she’s actually been doing very well. They wanted to make sure whoever they talked to wasn’t someone who’d get… hostile, upon seeing them, but also not someone who’d just walked in the door.

“Did I win?” she asks, and they both laugh again.

“Not yet, dear,” Lydia says.

“You’re doing _very_ well, though!” Edward says.

The woman’s shoulder’s fall a little, but she still nods. “Thanks.”

“And we thought, maybe,” Lydia says, as two ornate chairs form behind them, “You’d like to take a break, for a moment?”

A third chair appears near the woman, as well as a small table with a large glass bottle.

“This is our place of business, and we… don’t get out much, so we don’t get a lot of opportunities to just talk to people,” Edward says.

The woman blinks, then laughs.

“Alright,” she says, sitting down and taking hold of the bottle, and they both take their seats as well.

*

“It’s our birthday.”

Edward says this after an hour or so of very pleasant conversation with this contestant.

Lydia and Edward’s hands are clasped together over the armrests of their chairs, and they both smile as he says this. Telling a person this is the reason they’ve started this encounter- a _lot_ of their birthdays have passed without event over the years, but this one they just _had_ to do something special for.

They’re one thousand years old, today. Elves are already the longest lived of the races, and most will live into their seven hundreds- _maybe_ their eights or nines, if they’re lucky. But there is not a person of any race who has ever lived a millennium naturally. If they were still alive, they would be dead.

Everything they’ve done- all those years condemned to the shadows, all that time it took to get them where they are- it’s all been worth it. Because they’re not dead. They are together, and they will be, for the next millennium, and every one to come after it.

“Both of you?” the woman asks. She’s downed two bottles now, but she seems fine- dwarves are very, very, difficult to get intoxicated, and that’s another reason they chose to visit this particular contestant.

They've been making pretty general conversation, talking about notable goings-on of the outside world, coyly changing the topic when she asks questions that might give her a one-up in their game.

(Additionally, she is definitely trying to flirt with one or both of them, and it is pleasing, to say the least.)

“We’re twins,” Lydia explains.

"Ah," she says, "Sort of a family business, huh?"

Lydia and Edward glance at each other, their expressions faltering for less than a second as two different faces flash across both of their minds.

Their bright smiles are back before it can be noticed that they were gone, and they both laugh.

"I suppose you might say that," Lydia says.

She looks them both up and down for a moment, still leaning forward a bit in her chair.

“Well,” she raises her bottle, “Congratulations, to you both!“

She takes a long drink, and Lydia and Edward relax again. That’s what they wanted to hear.

*

“That was so much fun,” Lydia says.

“It _was_ ,” Edward says, materializing a fainting sofa and fittingly collapsing across it.

Lydia represses a laugh at this, materializing herself an almost throne-like chair beside his and sitting down.

They’re back in their central room, now- they let their guest get back to the game, after another couple of hours, just a little reluctantly.

“Maybe we should do it again,” she says.

Edward moves his arm from where it had been lying over his eyes to look at her.

“Do you think we could?” he asks, in a hushed tone.

“It is _our game_ ,” she says, smiling, “We can do whatever we want with it.”

Edward sits up, looking contemplative and excited. “We are bringing in contestants at a rate almost ten times above the minimum that we need,” he says. “We don’t need all of them suffering all the time.”

“Exactly,” Lydia says. She glances to the neon-lit walls now, a little wistfully, “And it’s been so, so long since we put on any kind of production together.”

“I know,” Edward says, a little wistful himself.

They don’t voice what they really miss, more than anything. They don’t need to- they both already know.

“It wouldn’t work to just take random contestants away every so often for an aside, though,” Lydia says.

“Probably not,” he says, nodding. He looks at her again. “What are you thinking?”

Lydia taps her fingers onto the armrest of her chair, and tilts her head.

“I think it would only be fair,” she says, turning back to her brother, “To let them decide for themselves.”

*

They end up molding a concept they both find _very_ exciting.

“This juncture,” Lydia’s voice rings out through two halls simultaneously, “Is a bit different from the others you’ve encountered here in Wonderland.”

Each identical juncture she’s talking about consists of two corridors you can turn down, one colored bright green, the other colored bright red.

“There is a party much like yours on the other side of these halls, about to make the same decision you are,” Edward says.

“At the end of the green halls is a challenge… about twice as difficult as the ones you’ve already faced here in Wonderland,” Lydia says.

“If you both go down the green halls, you and the other party will get to face this challenge together,” Edward continues, “If you are the only who goes down the green hall, you will have to face this nearly impossible challenge alone.”

“On the other hand, if you go down the red hall, and the other party goes down the green, you don’t have to do any fighting at all,” Lydia explains, “You will get a break from your trials.”

“If you _both_ go down the red hall, though,” Edward says, “Only one side will get to leave it. You’ll have to compete in order to see who moves on.”

This new decision game is the first of many changes they intend to make to their current system. It’s taken them this long to realize just how much creative freedom they have here- they can do so much better than just having people wander through a maze and fight monsters.

They intend to do a pretty thorough overhaul, layout-wise, though they definitely want to keep up their aesthetics. _Improve_ their aesthetics, even, if possible.

They want to increase the frequency of their physical appearances as much as possible… they both have quite a few design notes that they’ll be getting to. There’s going to be a lot of trial and error involved with adding these new elements, but that’s no issue.

They have time.


	9. 810 DR * 1265 DR

The finalized version of Wonderland is contained within an enormous black and white roulette wheel, each section opening into a different room with it’s own unique settings and appearances. Beyond these rooms is a much larger one, the center of the wheel- this is where Lydia and Edward really are, most of the time, but they project their voices, and images, now, into all of the different occupied rooms, hosting and managing everyone’s different journeys through Wonderland.

This requires a lot of multitasking, even between the two of them, but they have gotten good at that, over the years. They will pay a smidge more attention to certain routes, depending on what’s going on- if they’re playing a game, for example, or spinning a Wheel.

They have incorporated a new staple feature into Wonderland- person-sized roulette wheels, but not the not the kind you use for gambling. Not for gambling money, at least. The Wheel is decorated with a series of symbols, and whatever symbol the Wheel stops on gives Lydia and Edward a basis for what a contestant will be required to sacrifice, in order to move forward.

They’ve come to the conclusion that the three biggest things that make you suffer are losing what matters to you, being betrayed by someone you trusted, and of course, the classic, physical pain and exhaustion. The Wheel applies to the first, and their decision game applies to the second. The double-trust and double-forsake options of the decision game have been altered, now that the contestants never physically interact anymore- one is just a more difficult version of the other, now, which is a bit unfortunate, but a necessary consequence.

And the games- they are _very_ proud of and _very_ excited with what they’re doing with the games. When a contestant has forsaken their opponent they get to take part in game shows, that Lydia and Edward appear in-person for, and whether the contestants themselves are amused or bemused by this, Lydia and Edward always have so much fun with it. They have an enthusiastic audience, either way- they’ve learned to give a limited sentience to objects they create, so they can fill seats with mannequins and puppets that really act independently. They can’t speak, or think about much- all they’ve really programmed them to do is all they _need_ to do, which is to know a good performance when they see one.

It's when people give good enough performances in these games that they finally let them win. If you play along, if you put on not just a good but a great show- if you manage to entertain Lydia and Edward, genuinely, _thoroughly_ , then you will be allowed to walk away with your prize.

It's not the _most_ fair standard, and not many have made it so far- but those who have, _certainly_ deserved it.

Even the challenges for the people who have been forsaken are a lot more creative, with people randomizing their own unique monsters, or their summoning recreations of enemies from players’ pasts.

They’re both watching all of this now, mostly through their mental links to the different rooms. They are... more than satisfied, with what they’ve made, and just sitting back and admiring it makes them feel excited.

This is their present and their future, this is what keeps them alive, but it’s more than that. It’s something that they _enjoy_ doing, that makes them _feel_ alive. They could- they _will_ \- do this for the rest of eternity, together, and be satisfied with it.

“I _love_ it,” Edward says, resting his elbow on the rail of the grand central staircase they’ve placed in the center of their central room.

“It’s magnificent,” Lydia agrees, standing just next to him.

He rests his face is his hand and smiles. “I love you, you’re amazing, you know that, right?”

Lydia laughs, and kisses his cheek. “Yes, I do.”

*

“How long has she been in here?”

Edward tunes into the route Lydia’s on- an elven woman, alone now, though he doesn’t think she came in that way. She’s in the middle of a challenge, and the way she fights is almost mechanic, dodging attacks and landing blows like she doesn’t know anything else.

“I’m not sure,” he says, “Twenty years?”

“Really?” Lydia asks, turning towards him.

“Give or take a few, maybe,” he replies, “But that’s about it, I think.”

“That must be our longest,” she says, and he nods.

They both continue moving along a few other routes, but keep a peripheral eye on this woman as she completes her challenge. She finishes with barely a scratch, and walks through the door to the next room without a word.

The next room is of course the Wheel room, and the woman accepts her sacrifice without comment.

“We haven’t…” Lydia frowns slightly. “We haven’t gotten an intake of necrotic energy out of her in a _while_ ,” she says.

“Could you open the door?” The woman asks, as her large stone door remains closed, even though the light above it is lit up green.

Lydia and Edward look at each other.

“In… a minute,” Edward says.

The woman stands up straighter, looking up at the ceiling. She does not frown, though.

“How are you doing, dear?” Lydia asks. They usually aren’t this straightforward with getting their contestants to express their suffering, but they are genuinely interested, now.

The woman blinks a couple of times, then shrugs.

“About the same,” she says.

“The same as what?” Edward pries.

“As I have been. I’m fine. I’d like to keep going,” she says, and Lydia and Edward both look at each other again.

“She _was_ suffering, at a point,” Lydia says, “This isn’t just her idea of a good time, I don’t think. She’s just… stopped.”

Lydia and Edward both contemplate this for a moment, and a look tells them they’re both gaining on the same conclusion.

Emotion is a tangible energy, an already existent thing, that they are taking out of people. It forms the core of a person’s soul- it is the essence of a person’s being, what makes them themself. The most powerful energy in the world.

It’s never happened before, in all their hundreds of years, but it might seem they’ve just… taken it all, from this woman.

They exchange another look, this one of… discomfort. They do a lot of things to people, but even for them, this might be too much. Letting people die is one thing- a person’s time in this world ends and their time in another begins. This could destroy a person’s guarantee of even _having_ an afterlife- if your soul has nothing fueling it, it’s not going to last long outside of a body.

Lydia and Edward look at each other, again. They’re wasting energy keeping her alive at this point, if she isn’t giving any out, on top of anything else.

They think for another moment, and the decision passes between them.

They open the woman’s door.

*

The elven woman stumbles, as she passes through her door into a room far, far bigger than the one she’s been in for the last two decades.

The centerpiece of this room is their grand staircase, which stretches a couple of stories, about half the way to the ceiling. The top level of this staircase is taken up by a catwalk, surrounded by an audience of well-dressed mannequins.

The staircase stands above and conceals the main pile of artifacts- they wouldn’t want anyone getting greedy and trying to leave with more than what they came in for.

“Um…” The woman trails off, seeming a little overwhelmed by the change in scenery. “Hello? I don’t think I’m familiar with this one.”

The mannequins point her towards the catwalk, and after a moment, she ascends the stairs.

Disappointingly, she doesn’t do much once she’s up there but look around, confused.

Still, they reveal themselves standing just beside her, and she startles.

“Oh,” she says, looking between them and the fine setting she’s inhabiting. “I didn’t press-”

She stops short when she sees the object in Edward’s hands. It is a jeweled, golden cup, and the woman’s eyes widen like saucers when she sees it.

“You didn’t have to,” he says, smiling.

“You should be very proud of yourself, dear,” Lydia says, smiling as well. “You’ve accomplished a great deal. You’ve conquered Suffering itself, and made it here to claim your prize.”

The woman stands still, staring.

“You’ve won,” Lydia finishes.

She’s not reacting- this isn’t a good sign. Their suspicion is all but confirmed at this point, so they do what they really brought her in here for.

Not slowly, but not sudden enough for the woman to notice, just a bit of the vast, vast cloud of energy they have floating on the ceiling of this room floats down, and in the same way it often does to their forms, it sinks into this woman’s body.

The woman starts shaking. Her chest heaves, as if she were sobbing, and she moves a hand to cover her mouth.

They _do_ see tears in her eyes, for a moment, before her breathing evens out, and she starts to calm down, as quick as she reacted.

She looks back at them. Edward holds out the cup to her, and she finally takes it, slowly, as if expecting him to take it away at the last second.

She turns it over in her hands, staring with… maybe reverence, but mostly disbelief.

“I won,” she says, her voice almost hoarse. She looks back at them. “I’m… going to leave.”

“Of course,” Lydia says, nodding.

“What else would you do?” Edward says, tilting his head.

A doorway opens in her old room, across from another doorway, open to the outside, and when the woman sees this, her breath catches. She is frozen again, for a moment, before she looks back at them.

They nod encouragingly, and wave towards the door.

“Don’t mean to rush you, but we do have other contestants to help,” Edward says.

The woman stares for one more moment. She doesn’t seem happy, or excited- but her gaze is not completely neutral. She seems overwhelmed, relieved, maybe bitter.

“I _won_ ,” she repeats.

They nod and wave some more, smiling personably, and she levels a glare at them. Resentment.

She slowly begins to descend the stairs.

“Tell your friends!” Lydia calls cheerfully, just before she crosses the outer threshold, and the woman winces. She stops in her tracks, sways where she stands, for a moment.

Grief, Guilt, Anger, Regret.

Then, she crosses the threshold, and the exit disappears behind her.

*

“This is may be a little intense.”

Lydia does not let these words ring out into the room, keeping this conversation private.

“Maybe,” Edward says.

A woman who’s rolled _eye_ on the Wheel is now screaming and clawing at her face, as her eyes have been pecked out by a flock of false birds. The other members of her party are equally horrified, though they still try to comfort her.

It’s important to strike a balance, in what they do- they don’t want things to get too intense too fast. Their contestants should have won or... lost, before their Emotion gets a chance to drain all the way- they'd prefer to avoid another incident like that one.

“I suppose we could just unmake the eyes,” Lydia says, tapping her fingers. “Reconfigure a face without need for any bloodshed.”

Edward tilts his head. “That could work,” he says.

“It could work for the other physical sacrifices, too,” Lydia says. The intensity involved with some of the sacrifices can discourage players from wanting to move forward, and they can’t have that. Once someone has given up, they never last too long, and they like to keep contestants alive for as long as they can.

In the room, the woman’s companions have finally convinced her to move through the door, though at least one of them looks like they’re going to be sick.

“It’s something to think about,” Lydia says, and Edward nods.

*

“Dear.”

A half-elf woman does not react as Lydia’s voice rings out through her room.

A portal of Suffering that will shift her back to the other side of her room while they change the scenery stands open for her, but she does not approach it.

“It’s time to move on, dear,” Lydia says, her voice more hushed than she’d prefer. Than it has been, in a while.

The woman is shaking her head violently. She is crouched on the floor over a prone body, casting a healing spell, over and over. Every time she casts it, the body jerks, for a moment, and every time their magic nullifies the spell, it goes limp again.

“You have to keep going,” Edward says, equally quiet, “You know there’s nothing to be done.”

The woman continues to shake her head. She is crying, necrotic energy leaking from her mouth and eyes, and after a few more times casting the spell, it doesn’t go through.

(Out of slots, they might think.)

When this happens she collapses, letting her face fall onto the chest of this other person. He is- was- a half-elf, like her.

He looks so much like her.

This is not the first time someone has died within their walls, not by far. This is not the first time a companion of theirs has grieved them, refused to move on without them.

“Please,” the woman whispers, but they hear her loud and clear. Her words are still choked by sobs, but they understand her perfectly. “Please let me help him.”

This is not the first time they’ve been asked this.

But.

But-

“There is one thing,” Lydia says, still quiet, her voice shakier than is at all professional.

Edward looks at her, where they stand together in their central room, questioning, but not objecting.

The woman looks to the ceiling, her arms still holding the man that looks so, so much like her.

“He cannot have back the vitality he lost here. But if it matters enough to you,” Lydia begins to explain, for her brother and the woman, “You can transfer some of the vitality that you still have over to him.”

The half-elf woman sits up straighter, and nods, just as violently as she had been shaking her head moments before.

Edwards eyes widen a bit, understanding, and he nods, too.

Energy begins subtly permeating the air between the half-elf woman and her brother, becoming an advanced copy of the spell _vampiric touch_. As the energy is used up, the woman exhales sharply, a thin gash opening in her abdomen, and the man gasps, jerking up, almost knocking heads with her.

He looks confused, for a moment, and then the woman is holding him too tightly to tell. He hugs her back, and Lydia and Edward watch without comment, straight-faced.

Eventually they stand, the man still a little shaky on his feet, and approach the door.

*

They die at the same time. An imitation of a dragon catches them both in it’s breath, and they are both taken instantly. Lydia and Edward don’t even need to unmake their bodies- there’s nothing left.

They may be neglecting the other routes a little. They let the room with the false dragon sit frozen for a long time- they aren’t sure how long.

They don’t usually feel like this. They’ve been doing this for nearly nine hundred years, and they’ve always brushed off deaths just fine. It’s ridiculous to feel guilty all of a sudden- it’s a little late for that. They’re doing this to save each other. No one else matters. _Nothing else_ matters.

It doesn’t matter that they’ve caused the deaths of another brother and sister. They let them go out together, even- that’s more than one can hope for. _Plenty_ of the other people who’ve been through here have had siblings, surely, and Lydia and Edward haven’t been driven to empathize with them. Definitely not to the extent where they broke their own rules.

Though, they’ve been considering incorporating a feature like that for a while. Different things, games, maybe, that might get you a certain thing that should be against the rules in Wonderland, at a cost. Healing, escaping before you’re finished- the like. It could really help with endurance, they think, keep people going for longer-

Hm. They’re already thinking about game mechanics again- that’s good. They shouldn’t be wasting their time on this.

This isn’t about just any brother and sister. This is about _them_. It would be no good to start empathizing with their contestants, no matter who they are. They’ll keep this up for the rest of eternity, together, and they won’t let any emotions _they_ might be feeling hold them back.

Tuning back in, they have been ignoring their other routes more than a little- many people have been standing in uncomfortable silence for an embarrassingly long time.

Before they quite get back to it, Edward takes Lydia’s hand, and she smiles.

“Forever,” she says, and he smiles back.

“Forever.”


	10. 1504 DR * 1508 DR

Horrible wars rage outside their walls- friends turn on each other, families break apart, entire settlements fall to ruin. All for the sake of a few simple magical items- seven of them, scattered across Faerun, all with vastly different skill sets and attributes, but the same ridiculous level of power.

Months pass- not a long time at all in the scape of their lives, but long enough to tell them the frenzy over these things is not going away soon.

Of course they take one- just one. They wouldn’t want to draw any _unwanted_ attention, but if people are willing to abandon their values and turn on their loved ones for the sake of these things, surely they’ll be willing to pay Wonderland a visit.

*

They don’t use the relic for much- there’s not much that it can do that they can’t already, or that they’re particularly interested in- but the Animus Bell does _not_ disappoint on its intended purpose.

 _Hundreds_ of people flock into the Felicity Wilds at the call of the Bell- it’s the biggest spike in business they’ve ever had, and they have to do some upsizing just to accommodate. They can feel the call as well, of course, know that if any of these leagues of people actually made it to the end they wouldn’t- _couldn’t_ give it up. (Though, they have a pretty fun contingency plan for if anyone after the Bell _did_ manage to make it to the end.) There is a deep, powerful magic at work here, an all-encompassing thrall, that they know just enough to be aware of, but not enough to avoid.

(They don’t _need_ to avoid it, of course. The Bell serves its purpose, and it’s much better business to hang onto it, regardless.)

*

“Oh _man_.”

Edward fails to stifle a laugh as the wheel stops turning, and Lydia has to cover her smile with her hand, forgetting for a moment she can’t be seen.

The man who’d spun the wheel doesn’t speak at all- just swallows, staring ahead at the piece the wheel’s stopped on.

“Well,” Edward says, snickering again, “I guess we’re gonna take the other one.”

The man glances down at the stump where his right hand used to be, gulping again without saying anything.

(A deliberate move on his part, they’re starting to think, which is no good- refusing to participate just means they need to try harder.)

The stump is not bloody- it’s healed over completely, in fact. They’ve found removing the gore factor from the Wheel does in fact raise endurance in participants; it’s best to leave the blood and the intensity for the challenges.

“We _might_ take the other one,” Lydia corrects, after giving it a moment to sink in, “Remember, this is a _wager_ , not a sacrifice.”

The man exchanges a glance with his companion- another human, a woman, the one of them that’s here for the Bell.

He nods once. “Accepted.”

As he says this, a soft _ding!_ can be heard, and the hand icon on the wheel lights up, then floats to hover above the mans head.

The woman takes a hold of her wheel- there are two, in this room- and gives a hard spin. The wheel turns for a long few moments, clicking more and more slowly between the different icons before stopping on-

“Clock,” the woman says, her brow furrowing at the image. She looks up at the ceiling, addressing the source of their disembodied voices- “What’s clock?”

“Oh,” Lydia says, tapping her fingers against the rail of the central staircase and letting her voice ring out into the chamber, “For clock what you’re going to wager is time. If you lose this round…”

Lydia looks at her brother, cutting off the projection of her voice for a moment, and asks, “What round are they on?”

“Six, I think,” Edward says, tuning back in to this particular route.

“Hm,” Lydia says, letting her projection pick back up, “If you lose this round, I think we’re going to take _twenty years_ off of your life.”

The woman frowns up at the ceiling, then looks to her staff- white, wooden, taller than she is- with a deeply contemplative expression.

“Would I get to choose which twenty years?” she asks. A fair question, perhaps- her friend did get to choose which hand he lost, the first time- but Lydia and Edward both laugh.

“Oh, no, dear, you misunderstand,” Lydia says.

“We’re not going to take a chunk out of your past,” Edward says.

“More, your future,” Lydia continues. “If you accept, twenty years of your life that might have happened, never will. You’ll age all of that time within a second. Twenty years of life and opportunity, just…”

“Gone,” Edward finishes.

As they explain, the woman starts to look sick.

She looks at her partner, who shrugs. “Probably better than taking two. At this rate we might not see too many of those years anyway,” he says, and then winces as a bit of necrotic energy comes out of his mouth.

(It doesn’t hurt- there’s no reason for it to.

They both sigh in disapproval, not letting the sound carry. No good at all.)

After a long moment, she looks again to her staff, then takes a deep breath. “Accepted.”

Another _ding!_ , as the clock icon lights up and goes to float above the woman’s head, and both wheels disappear.

The man clutches his wand in his remaining hand, shifting anxiously, waiting for the empty room to change.

“Are we gonna fight the assholes who forsaked us?” he asks.

“You aren’t going to _fight_ anyone,” Lydia says.

“You _might_ have been competing against them,” Edward says, “ _If_ you had both chosen Forsake.”

“But you chose Trust,” Lydia says, and as she does, the tiles of the room begin to shift wildly, stumbling both contestants.

“So, instead,” Edward says, as the tiles begin to settle, having moved the two players to opposite sides of the room. Thirty statues- tall, brightly colored, and stylized so heavily they can barely be recognized as what they are- pop into existence around them, arranged neatly onto the squares.

Dread works its way into both of their expressions as their meet eyes across the room- they are each standing on spaces that would belong to kings, in a normal game.

“You’re going up against each other,” Lydia finishes, and the word _BEGIN_ flashes onto the man’s side of the room in neon bright letters.

*

The first time the man tries to capture a piece, the woman taps her staff onto the ground.

The man’s knight is stopped as a translucent, ethereal dome appears around the woman’s pawn, not only making it impossible to hit but, jarringly, cutting off Lydia and Edward’s control of it. They feel this break in their connection and try to dissolve the pawn into energy, just to be certain. No effect.

She’s done this in a few of the previous rooms, during fights- creating impenetrable shields around herself and her companion. The only reason they’ve been injured at all, really, is because the field works both ways- nothing can pass in _or_ out, so the shield eventually has to be dropped in order to defeat the monster.

It is a ridiculous level of power- a level of power that they recognize.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Both players look up to the ceiling. Lydia and Edward have been commentating their game, enthusiastically, up to this point, so the change in their tone must be noticeable.

“That’s _cheating_ ,” Edward continues.

Lydia snaps her fingers, and then suddenly, the woman’s hands are empty.

Her eyes go wide with panic, staring shocked for a moment at her empty hand before looking back up at the ceiling, where her relic floats, far out of her reach.

“This is a _game_ , dear, not a fight,” Lydia says, “No weapons or magical items allowed.”

She hopes that the strain can’t be heard in her voice, because now that the staff is out of the woman’s hands, she can _feel_ it. They both can. The same unignorable call that comes from the Bell sitting on the rail beside them, an infinite store of raw power, begging to be claimed.

The woman raises a hand over her head, standing on her toes even though the ceiling is _much_ too high to reach, then casts a Mage Hand.

They have to jerk the staff out of the hand’s grasp, and _oh_ , it would be _so_ easy to pull it up through the ceiling.

Lydia snaps again, expending a smidge of energy to cut off her spell. This time, she lets the players hear her sigh of disapproval.

“You don’t understand,” the woman says, a pleading undertone to her voice, her eyes still on the relic.

The staff pulses with energy, a different magic than that which they’ve seen anywhere but in the Bell- a radiation, almost. A light. It calls out not only for them, but for the light they already have, _imagine how easy it would be, to bring us back together-_

_Imagine all that you could gain with **two** -_

_One for each of you-_

_It would be **so easy** -_

“You’ll get it back afterward, I promise,” Lydia continues, and for a moment, the light becomes searing.

“We just can’t have you playing an unfair game,” Edward says, and they both laugh, before being sobered by the gradually mounting thrall.

 _We can’t have you playing an unfair game._ There are _plenty_ of unfair things about Wonderland, but they do not just _steal_ from their participants- not without their consent. Not without a turn of the Wheel.

(Not while they’re alive.)

(If she dies, they can keep it-)

“On with the game,” Lydia says, gripping the rail in a way that might hurt if she was alive.

Edward puts his hand over hers, and she sighs, loosening her grip on the rail and turning her hand over to take his instead.

The game kicks back into motion, and the woman finally looks back down. Her dome disappeared as soon as the staff left her hand, so she looks just in time to see the knight hit, making her pawn explode in a cloud of neon pink dust.

She gives a final glance up at her staff, and Lydia and Edward tune out of their route completely. They can play by themselves, for a while.

They can still feel the staff, though tuning out does weaken the connection enough that they can relax a bit, and they both glance at the Bell.

They do understand.

*

The woman with the staff ends up escape game-ing, and not long after, the flow of people coming in for the Animus Bell comes to a full stop. Even the participants already inside forget what they came in for, causing a pretty quick loss of motivation and subsequent early death for most of them. It’s a shame, and so strange- as if the existence of the thing was wiped completely from the collective consciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think Lucretia was/is actually under the thrall of her relic- it's just very important to her, as the only part of the Light she had left.


	11. 1516 DR

Or not, they suppose. A good eight years later, they receive three new participants after the Animus Bell- a very strange trio of men, who seem very adamantly unbothered by anything thrown at them.

This is nothing new- it's often enough that contestants catch on to what they're doing here and foolishly think refusing to cooperate will help them. They just have to go harder on these folks- they'll always cave, eventually, if they don't die before they get the chance.

What _is_ new is the cloud of energy, energy that _they_ channeled, energy that must have been stolen from them _somewhere_ in the process, being used to form a variety of plain and useless household objects in their Boss Rush room.

"What is _doing_ that," Edward says, looking on mentally, with some annoyance, some interest, but mostly confusion.

The contestants defeat their third enemy, and Lydia and Edward are momentarily distracted from the aberration as part of it- the false wand, the thing their replica was using to channel magic- is sucked up by the staff one of the _contestants_ is using to channel magic. They feel their connection to the Emotion used to make the wand break- it's _gone_ , suddenly, just like that.

They have _two_ things to be confused about, now. They unmake the rest of the remains of the third enemy and take it up a notch for the fourth- a tank, instead of a person.

The objects in the room continue shifting without pattern, and none of the contestants seem to have anything to do with it. One of them is standing still and praying, another has abandoned the fight to- just, vandalize a few of their _mannequins_ , it seems, which is actually fairly entertaining. Amusing, at least.

The severed head is only alive right now on their good graces, they could let him die on a whim- if he's doing this, they have nothing to worry about, and the third contestant-

Oh _wow_. Edward claps, briefly, on instinct, and Lydia presses her lips together to suppress a laugh as he _polymorphs into a dinosaur_ and _bites the front half off_ of this _tank_.

This is a very entertaining fight, they have to admit.

"I know they double-trusted," Lydia says, as the tank dissipates and they energy that made it up hangs in the air for a moment, awaiting command, "But I think if we tried..."

The energy picks up a few (flaming, disarmed) mannequins and begins to form into an _enormous_ shape- the makings of a Purple Worm, a nearly invincible monster, and one that these contestants did _not_ manage to kill in real life.

"Putting them up against an enemy they couldn't defeat?" Edward finishes for her.

Lydia nods. "If they're really the ones doing that, and they value their lives, they'll have no choice but to unmake the thing."

"And what do we do then?" Edward asks.

"I might like to ask some questions, to be honest. We'll see, from there," she says.

Edward nods. "I don't think they _actually_ pose a threat to us, either way," he says, "If they were competent at all with Emotion I think they'd be doing a lot more than creating ovens and potted plant-."

Lydia and Edward both start as they see- see for real, in front of them, as well as through their mental links, a door appear in the wall of that room.

They disappear from the catwalk as the contestants walk in, and reappear in the audience behind it, among their mannequins.

They don't say anything for a moment, as the contestants look around the room, a few details clicking into place in their minds.

"Losers take _fourteen_ tries to get a _door_ ," Lydia whispers, and Edward laughs. That explains that- they've misfired some very complicated objects into different things entirely, in the past, but never something so simple, and never so many times in a row.

They've taken the Bell with them, off the catwalk, and as they contemplate what their next move should be it tries emitting it's thrall, urging them to kill the contestants and keep the relic for themselves.

(It's tried using this to turn Lydia and Edward on each other a few times, in the last few years, always futilely.)

They _could_ just kill them all immediately- they’re all very much on death’s door- but where would the fun be in that?

Lydia rolls the handle of the Bell between her fingers.

"We _have_ come up with a whole plot for this scenario," Lydia says, "It would be a shame not to use it."

Edward nods, looking to the Bell. "Such a shame."

The crowd breaks out in applause around them, and they're confused for just a moment before they see that one of the contestants has reached the catwalk.

Lydia and Edward look at each other, one last time, and they both smile.

"This could be fun," Edward whispers, before they prime their voices to project all throughout the room.

The last contestant reaches the catwalk, and they find themselves telling a story they haven't thought about in a while.

*

Lydia can hardly feel, can hardly think. In her final moments she lashes out, destroys something that maybe those people can’t stand to lose, that might make them suffer like she is. She doesn’t try to hold herself together, after that, to draw on the Suffering in her or around her- there’s no point.

And then, she is drifting, drifting through space, drifting through planes, and through her haze of fury and grief she can feel herself being pulled in opposite directions, two different forces calling out for her. This lasts a few moments, before one wins out- the final remnants of a holy power, claiming finally what should have belonged to it a long time ago.

She is compelled through heavy walls and reinforced doors, coming to rest behind thick bars, and she can’t _stand_ this- her mind and vision are a haze, but she throws her immaterial self against the wall, towards the now faint call of that other force.

She can’t bear eternity like this, she can’t be in here alone, she wants an _end_ , she wants-

She wants to scream again, but she is cut off, her voice muffled as her face falls onto someone else’s shoulder, and arms wrap around her. She freezes, for a moment, before she can bring herself to look up, but when she does what is left of her shakes with a sob.

A wispy, gray, ethereal form. A young elven man in a cloak.

Edward has been sobbing and panicking and _suffering_ in here alone, conflicted between between the the fury he felt at the thought of his sister dying and the absolute hopeless dread he felt at the thought of spending eternity in here alone.

They are both here, now, for better _and_ for worse, and Lydia wraps her arms around his shoulders.

“You’re okay,” she whispers, her voice shaking, and his arms tighten around her.

This is not true, and they both know it- they are dead, and they are condemned. But they are together, and either of them could take a life- an afterlife- in prison, as long as that fact remained.

Neither of them are sure how long they remain like this, embracing and shaking. Eventually, they raise their heads to their surroundings, but do not let go of each other.

They are contained in a small featureless cell, off a dark, still hallway, stretching infinitely in either direction. Across the hall they can see other cells, containing wispy figures that are as still as the hall itself, though they each cast some faint light. All of the figures they can see are organized two to a cell. Paired in order of when they arrived, Lydia assumes- then, they had a fifty/fifty chanced of being placed together.

 _A mercy_ , she thinks to herself, leaning further into her brother- chance on their side one final time.

Lydia reaches out to touch the bars, and despite her ethereal appearance, she cannot pass through them. She did not really expect to- worth a try, though.

She almost wants to laugh. Instead she starts crying again, and Edward tightens his arms around her.

“I thought you were gone,” she whispers, hoarsely, into his shoulder. “I thought they destroyed you.”

Edward shakes his head, doing his best to comfort her. As shocking and vastly uncomfortable as his defeat had been, he knows he got off easy, in comparison to Lydia. He can hardly imagine- he doesn’t _want_ to imagine, what it was like. What it would have been like, if the situations were reversed.

“I couldn’t- I could’ve, but I _couldn’t._ I couldn’t hold on,” Lydia chokes out, her face still buried in his shoulder, “I couldn’t do it without you.”

Edward nods, stroking the ethereal projection of her hair. He understands- of course he understands.

She looks up, looks him in the face. They are not skeletons, at least. They look like their living selves, if in their robes, wispy and grey like the rest of them.

“I still needed you,” she says, “I still need you. I’ll always need you.”

Edward is choking up again, too. “I love you, Lydia.”

Lydia nods, falling back into their hug. “I love you, Edward."

*

Time passes- they hear the sound of a door, opened and slammed shut in a panicked hurry, too far down the hall to be seen, but otherwise there is no outside change.

They hear forelorn wailing, or hopeless moans, occasionally, and try to channel them into energy out of habit, but the spell fails. Their lich forms are destroyed, and they have nothing to channel with- they have no power.

They have been defeated, after all this time. Thinking back to the event makes both of their minds spin with thoughts of regret, _we were too overconfident_ , _we could have just killed them_ , _we saw what that staff could do in the room before_ , _we_ saw _it_ , _why didn’t we think_ -

They shake their heads. What good will thoughts like that do them, really? They can’t tear events out of history- they could, if they had Emotion, but they don’t.

They don’t except for what’s inside them, they suppose- they were externalizing so much of it a while ago, but they’ve calmed down now, for the most part. One of each of their arms are still around each other, and they’ve leaned back into the stone wall, watching the other figures behind bars.

And now, Lydia _does_ laugh. Her whole form shakes with it.

Edward looks at her for a moment, and then he’s laughing, too.

“Two thousand, two hundred years,” Lydia says, through laughter. “Two thousand, two hundred and _three_.”

“All of that, and in the end we get taken down by an _umbrella_ ,” Edward says, laughter breaking up his words as well.

They keep laughing, and the thought they’re externalizing emotions crosses their minds, but they let it go. Never in their lives have they been able to channel joy, and that’s not really what they’re feeling now, anyways. Astonishment, at their downfall. Amusement, at the sheer absurdity of it. Relief, that even now, even like this, they are still together.

They can’t do anything special, with these emotions. All they can do is feel them.

Their laughter dies down, after a long few minutes, and Edward takes a faux breath.

“This it, then?” he asks. “Condemned to an eternity of imprisonment, for attempting an eternity at life.”

Lydia snorts. “Poetic.”

They both laugh again.

“Joke’s on them,” Lydia whispers, tightening her arm around him.

Edward side-hugs her in return, and they stay like that. Just like that.

“Forever?” Edward whispers, letting his eyes close.

The word stirs one more laugh from Lydia, a short, unnecessary exhalation. She lets her head fall onto his shoulder, and lets her eyes close in turn.

“Forever.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have a loooooooot of emotions about these two. Ep 57 emotionally broke me.  
> Also, if the work categories weren’t clear enough, I want to make it 1000% clear this is in no way shape or form incest. Nothing but very dedicated and caring normal sibling relationships here, folks.


End file.
